As part of making things right with those who purchased Halo: The Master Chief Collection, purchasers are getting one additional month of Xbox Live Gold for free as part of the making amends.

MCC owners should receive a message on their Xbox One console indicating that an additional month of Xbox Live Gold has been added to their account.

All owners of the MCC that played the game before December 19th will get the one month extension of their Xbox Live Gold membership. In addition those MCC owners will also get an exclusive in-game nameplate and avatar. In addition at some point in the future these MCC owners will also get Halo 2's Relic multiplayer map and Halo ODST's campaigns which will be added to the MCC for free.

The matchmaking issues which have plagued the MCC since release are still not completely solved, despite several patches and a significant amount of work. 343 has confirmed that another update for the matchmaking is undergoing additional testing and should be pushed out in the next of days if all goes well. The hope is that this will finally resolve the matchmaking issues.

Despite the rocky launch of the MCC, owners seem to be pleased with the progress 343 has made on getting it right.

Sources have tipped us that the upcoming multiplayer Beta for Halo 5 will not exactly be a small download. The Halo 5 beta will start at the end of the month for those that will have access to it through the purchase of the Master Chief Collection. Right now we have not heard of any additional ways for Xbox One owners to gain access, but we suspect that there will be other ways before the beta ends on January 18th.

Checking in at over 10GB, it is going to take more than a little while for most to be able to download the beta once testing opens on December 29th. Early previews of the upcoming multiplayer beta for Halo 5 seem to indicate much change according feedback that pro gamers and Halo players have.

Whispers of a planned release date of Halo 5 for April 13th have been rumored, but we have continued to hear from multiple sources that a fall release that could slip farther into the holiday season of 2015 are much more likely. We think the rumors of an April release are bunk.

As work continues to swat the bugs and address the issues in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, a new 523MB update has been releases. This update targets primarily the matchmaking issues which has been the root of many complaints since release.

According to an announcement on the Halo Waypoint, upon the next time you start up the MCC, you will be prompted to download the 523MB update. Beyond addressing the matchmaking issues, the posting also says that the update contains fixes for various bugs related to the UI and party system and the update is said to improve the overall stability of the game.

343 says that this update is part of their ongoing commitment to address issues with the MCC. Additional content updates are coming to address additional issues that have been reported. This update patch is just another update among the continued expected stream of updates that the MCC is likely to see over the next could of months while the struggle continues to make things right with the MCC.

Bonnie Ross who is the studio head over at 343 Industries promises that they will not only fix things with Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but they will also make things right with the fans.

Ross explained on her blog, "We have not delivered the experience you deserve," explained Ross in her blog. She went on to apologize by saying, "I personally apologize for this on behalf of us all at 343 Industries. Our team is committed to working around the clock until these issues are resolved.”

She continued by adding, "While our team works on continual improvements and towards solutions, my commitment to you is that we will take care of all owners of Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Our primary and continued focus is first on fixing the issues at hand. Once we've done that, we will detail how we will make this right with our fans."

In the blog that was posted on Halo Waypoint, she gets into the nuts and bolts of what happened and why it happened. Still the end result was the same, but coming clean and falling on your sword and admitting there are problems and mistakes were made is an honest first step toward making things right with the fans. While the work will continue, with the sheer scope of the MCC and all that was included we are perhaps lucky there are not more issues than this.

343 Industries, true to their word released a client side update to Halo The Master Chief Collection. The update that was released earlier in the weekend was said to address campaign UI issues as well as some of the matchmaking and party issues. The first pre-season of the online cup for the Halo Championship Series has been announced as delayed till all of the matchmaking issues are resolved.

343 Industries has confirmed that a second client side update is coming next week that will be focused on matchmaking performance. Server side patches have been released that are said to address some server stability issues and should help lay the ground work for the client side patch coming later this week.

While it seems that 343 is on top of the problems, there are still a lot of problems to resolve. From what we understand the developers are working 24/7 to isolate and fix all of the server issues, but the problems at launch have really left a black eye on the entire MMC release.

Originally, word was that Halo: The Master Chief Collection would require a 20GB day one download. Now we are hearing that the original download is down from 20GB to only 15GB which is good news for those who will be buying the game at retail.

343 says that the original estimate of the day one download was a little bigger than they first thought. The total install for the Master Chief Collection comes in at just under 58GB with the update installed. The good news is however, that the day one update contains multiplayer content and tweaks that will not stop you from playing the campaign while it downloads the day one update. Again, good news from 343!

343 studio head Dan Ayoub has confirmed that Halo: The Master Chief Collection will have a day one content update that is 20GB. Simple was too much content to fit on a single dual layer Blu-ray disc. (The usable space on a dual layer Blu-ray disc in the Xbox One is about 45GB.)

“The update is necessary in order to give Halo fans the best possible experience and no compromise the features of the collection.”, according to Ayoub. While Ayoub does knowledge that the update is large, he went on to add, “we weren’t about to cut corners to save disc space. This ensures that you are getting ever bit of Halo goodness we can fit in.”

Halo: The Master Chief Collection has gone gold, but 343 is working on the tuning and tweaking in order to optimize the online experience to make sure that they can ensure a smooth multiplayer launch. Right now the plan is for the work to continue right up till the actual release of the game.

As far as downloading the update goes, those that pre-order the digital version will pre-load not only the game itself, but the content update as well. This way those that pre-ordered the digital version will be able to play as soon as the game launches. Everyone else who purchases the physical copy of the game will have to endure the 20GB content update.

The actual release date has changes in some territories with most everyone being able to pickup the game on November 11th from their favorite retailer. Those in Belgium will have to wait till November 12th, France will have to wait till November 13th, and those in Japan will have wait till November 13th.

In an interesting development, Microsoft has announced a new Xbox One bundle. This bundle is the Halo Master Chief Collection bundle that includes a white Xbox One console and a single wireless controller. The same as the Sunset Overdrive bundle that has been already announced and will arrive shortly.

Thing is that the Master Chief bundle will only be available in Brazil (At least for now, sources tell us.). So, the Halo Master Chief Xbox One bundle is a Brazilian exclusive for the time being.

I am not sure that I would go as far as to say that it is a first for Microsoft, but I can’t recall the last time that Microsoft did a console bundle exclusive for the Brazilian market. I sure would to have rather seen a themed version instead.

Despite a lot of talk about wanting Halo 2 Anniversary to run at full 1080p (1920x1080), 343 says that they have not been able to get there despite working really hard at it. Instead it has been decided that Halo 2 Anniversary will be rendered at 1328x1080 instead.

According to reports the decision was made due to the limitations of the engine and the buffer that allows for the switching between the classic and Anniversary modes simultaneously. This means that you are basically leveraging the power of the system to render the game twice so that at an instant you can switch between modes. Of course it is no surprise that this sucks the system resources and while Anniversary looked great at 720p, the developers wanted more.

So while the new remastered anniversary version of Halo 2 runs at 1328x1080 it does run at 60fps. All of the reason of the in the Master Chief Collection run at 60fps in brilliant 1080p. Again, those titles did not need to be remastered and were already designed to run at 1080p, so you had a few advantages including no need to run two rendering engines at once.

Sources say that the new Xbox One version of Halo 4 is quite nice and actually plays like it was designed for the Xbox One all along. The Master Chief Collection is of course and Xbox One exclusive and it will arrive on 11th in North America and November 14th in Europe.

Something that we might file under “I am not sure we heard you right”; goes the news that 343 is apparently seriously thinking about bringing Halo Reach and Halo ODST to the Xbox One. No, we are not kidding!

343 Executive Producer Dan Ayoub says “so many people have asked out it that we are thinking about it” according to VideoGamer.com.

There were several reasons that it was decided to leave Reach and ODST out of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One. First off they apparently wanted to focus on the Master Chief-centric games and quiet honestly, disc space was also an issue. They are squeezing everything out of the capacity that the 50GB Blu-ray disc offers with what we already have. There really simply was no space to add Reach and ODST.

Right now 343 does not have Reach and ODST in their planning for Xbox One, but they have been asked for it so much they are thinking about it. So we will have to wait and see, but we have to think that if enough people continue to ask for it, 343 and Microsoft will find a way to make it happen at some point, but we don’t think it will arrive anytime in the very near future.